Me and my coffeehouse… it’s a love/hate relationship, for sure. It’s great on the rare occasion that Shelley and I get to go “sit a spell,” sans kids, and just soak it in. It’s great when someone who actually likes coffee — black coffee, and not primarily due to caffeine — comes in and starts up a conversation. It’s great on the days people are feeling generous, or romantic, or joyful generally. There are plenty of reasons to love it.

It’s not so great, however, when I look at how much time I’ve put into it, then consider how little (financially speaking) I have to show for it. It sucks when customer after customer comes in looking for “a regular cup of coffee,” interspersed with yuppies who want to order everything “grande” and “skinny.” And it really, really bothers me that most of my employees still don’t have a true appreciation of coffees — the differences in origins, roast profiles, brewing methods, etc.

That last one, of course, is my own fault. And it pisses me off.

I usually place the blame on them — lazy college kids with 15 things on their minds, 14 of which don’t matter in the slightest. (This is, at least, what my brain says to me in true self-righteous fashion.) But it has hit me of late that if coffee is an art, the artists certainly need training… and it’s up to me to make that happen.

There are positive things happening despite me: we’re selling much more French pressed coffee these days — drip is convenient, but ranks at least fourth on the list of Reasonable Ways to Brew Coffee — and selling more beans for home use than ever before. Yet I still sense a general lack of coffee knowledge, in Bowling Green generally, as well as among my employees.

This was made all the more painfully evident upon my visit today to stumptowncoffee.com, the website of a Portland, Ore.-based cafe chain that does everything coffee on an unbelievable scale. For starters, there’s no drip coffee at all… they brew their straight coffees in French presses all day long, yet keep their price points competitive in their market. Their employees are not only coffee experts, but dressed to impress and driven to please. Outside of their sole New York location, you probably won’t find a better cup of retail coffee outside the West Coast.

Of course, I’m in Bowling Green and have a far different clientele; I won’t be getting rid of my Bunn brewer anytime soon, nor denying customers “espresso drinks” that contain nearly as much flavoring as coffee. But just surfing through their website was a bit like visiting a monastery: I’m humbled at Stumptown’s dedication, ashamed at my lack of it, and left wishing I could flip a switch and become as holy as they. But whether we’re talking spirit or coffee, there’s no way to simply leap into enlightenment… it’s a journey, and it starts with a few small steps. I plan to try taking one or two, and with a little luck (or blessing?) I may look back years from now, only to find that my origin is out of sight and my destination much nearer than I could have imagined.

Tags: espresso, French press, mediocre and melancholy

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 7.16 pm and is filed under coffee, work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.